He never heard the words spoken in person. Instead they were passed along to him through a phone call from an excited friend. As he listened at his home in England to the brief yet potent phrase, he did not know what to make of the call coming so late in the evening from New York.

The friend told him that Sri Chinmoy had just remarked to a couple of people, “Tejvan is our cycling champion.”

On hearing this, Tejvan was intrigued as to what his teacher had meant by saying that. True he enjoyed competitive cycling but he, at age 31 in the summer of 2007 was at best only an amateur cyclist, though he had won quite a few local races. To become a national champion was an incredibly lofty achievement in the very competitive world of British cycling. One that was still a long way off.

Also, like many other part time athletes he had lots of other responsibilities. Not the least of which, in order to pay the bills, was his job as a tutor of economics in Oxford. In addition he also spent many hours each day on various volunteer Internet projects.

When asked about all the tugs and pulls on his time and his life he says, “the most significant part of my life has been being a student of Sri Chinmoy. The spiritual life and meditating you could say have been the cornerstone of my life.” He became a student of Sri Chinmoy in 1999.

Audio Part 1:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The notion of being a champion was of course appealing. One that was certainly not impossible, but for all appearances it was something that was extremely remote. For just to fulfill all your daily obligations is difficult enough, and yet to excel at them all is something most of us just don’t care to think about, little alone try to succeed at.

He modestly says, “I am fortunate to have a few different hats to wear.”

Photo by Ian McVety

Yet to even to begin to understand the relationship between a spiritual master and their students is to realize that every word spoken, every glance exchanged, are just fragments of things that exist only on the surface of a very vast, deep and inner relationship. One that transcends all that we physically see or mentally understand.

A spiritual master has only one objective when they take on the responsibility of having students. That is to tirelessly inspire them to succeed, challenge and nurture them to grow spiritually, and set forth goals that will teach them that nothing in their lives is truly impossible to achieve.

This in a nutshell is what Sri Chinmoy had set out for Tejvan when he called him a cycling champion.